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Comments

Comment Policy

At The Catholic Herald we want our articles to provoke spirited and lively debate. We also want to ensure the discussions hosted on our website are carried out in civil terms.

All commenters are therefore politely asked to ensure that their posts respond directly to points raised in the particular article or by fellow contributors, and that all responses are respectful.

Guest

‘Catholics must help a “tired” Europe rediscover its roots, Pope Francis said during a visit to Sant’Egidio community‘s headquarters in Rome yesterday (full video, John Allen).’

Would that you, Holy Father, did a good deal more (of your actual job as Chief and Ruling Liturgist aka Supreme Pontiff) to once again foster the Western Rite(s) in the rediscovery of its roots .. or at least trim away its cancerous – and now mouldy – man-centred waywardness in deliberately replacing the ‘pristine’ Divine Services .. recall this (miraculous little gem):

‘”They have conserved that pristine liturgy, no?” Pope Francis says. “So beautiful. We [i.e., the Latin Christians] have lost a bit the sense of adoration, they conserve it, they praise God, they adore God, they sing, time does not count. The center is God and that is a richness that I would like to emphasize on this occasion as you ask me this question.”‘

The Catholic Church, East and West in Roman Tradition, cannot hope to redirect a tired anybody or anything in recovery of its Christian roots while the pastors of Church continue to smoulder and obscure these very same ‘roots’ with a modernising smoke that has risen in the sanctuary for well over sixty years – and choked in disobedience all it meets for near on fifty of those.

God Bless Our Pope! Lord, help us all!

St Michael defend us in the day of battle!

Papa Pacelli – Beato Subito / Santo Subito!

Liturgically Abused

Amen to that, Guest!

MEENA999

I think it might help you to understand what is actually happening in the Church if you think of Pope Francis as the Catholic equivalent of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev in the mid to late 1980s.

Francis has a much more difficult job of course and he is unlikely to take matters all that far during his lifetime. So much depends on his successors.

Guest

Pope Francis is no mere President of a Board or State, he is, primarily, the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church and a Sovereign Prince over it .. as the Lord prescribed and the Church has affirmed (time and again).

Occasionally, as a Sovereign Prince, an apostle, he must address worldly issues – and do so forthrightly as best he may .. according to his own insight, but always with one prime aim: to witness faithfully to the Sacred Tradition of the Faith.

The Holy Father, however, knows well enough that the Catholic Church in the West has in large part turned from the ‘pristine’ form of liturgy, and he clearly expressed it, for he is part of the generations of pastors who have wrought its destruction (though he is yet to confess it, and do penance).

His is the duty to witness, and demand – yes, demand – a maintenance or restoration of Authentic Liturgy. His is the principle seat in expressing fundamental continuity with that Petrine witness of divinely revealed devotion, worship and obedience to Christ; not least where the Church prays what it believes. His is the hand now laid to the tiller in Christ’s Name that must keep the Ark upon its course .. buffeted and blasted and beleaguered as it may well be from within as without; not with his own opinions as guide but holding firm to the Treasure gifted from the Holy Ghost to us all: A living and active word, our faith (even in his own fallibly expressed opinion).

Re: “buffeted and blasted and beleaguered as it may well be from within as without” Yes. the Catholic Church can expect this, as Christ predicted, that the faithful will be persecuted for His sake.

But Christ also said that those who suffer for the sake of truth are the blessed on this earth. Indeed the Church has survived for 2000 years – far longer than any organisation on the planet – and Christ promised to Peter, as he made him the Head of the Church, that – whatever the shortcomings of humans in the Church – “the gates of Hell will never prevail against it”.

We are all never exempt from trying even harder to live up to Christ’s standards.

Guest 2

“Amen to that, Guest!”
On the contrary.
Amen to truth; not to obfuscation.